


games

by nebulia



Category: Amatsuki
Genre: Board Games, M/M, Mind Games
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-03
Updated: 2013-05-03
Packaged: 2017-12-10 06:41:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/782983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nebulia/pseuds/nebulia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ginshuu has always liked shougi best.</p>
            </blockquote>





	games

**Author's Note:**

> ficlet, initially published 21 October 2008 as a birthday present for isaac on livejournal. I have not edited it to reflect any changes in canon (as of 3 may 2013, when i'm posting to ao3), and it's been so long since I've read amastuki that i can't remember if any canon makes this truly AU. But I think yes. So spoilers up through around chapter 40-some, iirc.
> 
> italics are lines from the manga.

_\--And how would you control me?_

_\--I would not_

_You saved my life_

 

Shougi is Ginshuu's favorite. Even more so than go, but that is mostly because _he_ hates go. So they don't play it. He doesn't hate shougi, for some reason, even though he really is bad at it.

But when they play shougi, Ginshuu can watch him think, watch the way his hand taps against his chin, those clawed fingers delicate against fragile skin, scaled palm encased in cloth all of a sudden one day. Ginshuu can look at the ends of his hair, now brushing his chin, now his collarbone, and watch him blow it irritably out of his face.

 _I'd like it if you grew it long_  
  
And he would. Byakuroku-san (or whatever his name is) has beautiful hair.

Let's face it. Byakuroku-san is beautiful. Not in such a girly way, but he grows like a weed, one day lanky, the next lean and slim, and so handsome in repose that it makes one ache. Ginshuu looks in the mirror and sometimes sees the princess he's become, the princess he's supposed to be, angular male body hidden underneath robes and soft gentle face, framed by masses of hair. His hair is nice, he likes it, but Byakuroku-san's hair looks like it would be soft like silk, and it is gold in the sunlight.

And they pass days like this, shougi and sunlight and springtime, but once time, years have passed, once everything is done, and the boy that Ginshuu knew as Byakuroku is not Byakuroku, but _Bonten,_ they stand on two sides of one barrier and they cannot cross. And Bonten, hair long now, both hands achingly human, wings hidden in some secret space, looks at Ginshuu with such contempt, maybe even hatred, and though his mouth twists cruelly at Ginshuu's curse, his eyes are so bitter.

 _He does not wish to kill. He's not like_ you __  
  
They play a game, perhaps. They possess knowledge, of the world, of each other; months of games and questions have ensured that. But they are trapped in roles from which they cannot escape; and not a year of study or dreaming or confusion, nor any unwritten page can end the rituals of centuries. Ginshuu is the twenty-eighth princess, the twenty-eighth decoy; he doesn't know how many Byakuroku-samas there have been.

When he met Bonten, his life was so simple.

It is not like that anymore.

There are questions of sides and right and wrong. No longer his mission is to _protect;_ it is some great thing that he's not sure he understands, not sure if he _wants_ to understand. It was so simple then, so easy.

It is not simple now. Not simple because every time he looks at Bonten he aches, and it's a cruel, painful one that is almost tangible because Bonten is still so beautiful, perhaps even more so than he ever was, and yet he is jaded, contemptuous.

Ginshuu thinks—Ginshuu _knows_ —that the Bonten he met that year, the Bonten he grew to know so well, resides within the Bonten he knows now. Or maybe not even resides there as is actually a part of him, is there still in his eyes, his mouth, his little sly smile. Ginshuu would give up a lot of things to bring out that part of him, the part he grew to—

Well. He doesn't think of that.

Ginshuu plays shougi with Tsuruume sometimes, when he is finished with any work he has and she is relaxed. A win is just a win, and a loss is just a loss, no questions asked, ever, but it's shougi, and it's still Ginshuu's favorite. Tsuruume is good at it when she puts her mind to it, but it took her time and more than one sore loss to get there.

Perhaps he would have been good at it too.

_I know things that humans do, and humans know things that I do not. If we were to join forces, we'd see the truth of this world._

_Wouldn't we all like to taste that fruit?  
_

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos appreciated!


End file.
